All Blog Posts Tagged 'argument' (18)

I recently started teaching at a small home school. I had no idea what I was getting into until I started teaching "Biology" <--- note the quotations! I opened up the book expecting to find hard facts and good lessons but instead it started off by saying how all animals were created on the 5th day. *Cue immediate facepalm* Now I'm supposed to read this to my class, which took some hard effort and displacement of my consciousness. I felt like such a fraud!

One argument that I tackled in an earlier post was the fine tuning argument. I thought about it for a while, and I thought of one of my interests: Astronomy. I realized that there are thousands of galaxies and millions of stars and planets out there. So are we really "fine tuned"? Why us and not any one of the other millions of planets? Why haven't we found life on other planets? For those of you who do not know much about cosmology or astronomy there is a certain Goldilocks zone that a…

I enjoy looking at a variety of views on both theism and atheism. One argument that has intrigued me is the problem of evil which goes something like this:
Premise 1.) If God exists, then there would be no evil (immoral actions) in the world.
Premise 2.) There is (are) evil (immoral actions) in the world.
Conclusion: God does not exist.

This is a strong argument in favor of Atheism, however many would try to attack the first premise which we shall call (1). I have been… Continue

I pose this question, since I have watched many of William Lane Craig's great academy award winning performances. I have heard many atheist say that he has won most of the debates against atheist, but I have always come to the conclusion that he has not provided anything with substance. He uses the same old arguments that are known not to be very strong. Therefore from my point of view he lost. I think a person wins a debate if their claims are true, if they provide evidence, and if the…

It is sometimes argued that only the religious could really comprehend religion and that, therefore, the irreligious ought to abstain from criticizing religion or religious beliefs. In other words, a peculiar worldview can only be fully understood from within and should thus be criticized only from within.

This argument can easily be refuted by a reductio ad absurdum. If it were true that peculiar worldviews could only be comprehended by those…

On Network Norwich and Norfolk there is an article by a certain Mr James Knight in which the author claims to show that ‘there almost certainly is a God’.[1] As becomes evident soon, however, Mr Knight is definitely mistaken. I shall have to make only a few remarks so as to show you why.First, point (7) of Mr Knight’s article demonstrates his misconception of mathematics. Mathematics is not something found in nature. Instead, it is a tool invented by…

“Does it ever occur to you that the victims of your solipsistic, nihilistic, intellectually bankrupt anti-philosophy might deeply resent it? You pride yourself on being logical, but logic, based on the rational intuitions of the human mind, is simply an accidental phenomena like having a lot of warts. You can't refute the Cosmological argument, except of curse by dishonestly misstating it as cracker barrel philosopher, Bertrand Russell did. If I ever…

A few months ago my Grandfather attempted to try and get me to go to church with him and the rest of the family (This happens every few weeks). As usual I refused and told him that I was Atheist which meant that I don't go to church. Then he asked me something new, he asked me why I didn't believe in something that people had believed for thousands of years. After all, billions of people could not be wrong.

Instantly in my head I said "Wow... could you have come up with a stupider… Continue

Welcome to the third installment in what is sure to be a lengthy response to the claims and arguments made in the popular Christian iPhone app for debaters and apologists, called Fast Facts.

In the first two parts, as well as this one, I will be tackling the section of the app under the "Challenges and Tactics" category. There are so many counter-arguments to supposedly popular claims and challenges, and so much to say about most of them, that…

So often, when in debate we can encounter an immovable opponent, who, no matter what you say or write, is convinced that their position is right. There is nothing more frustrating than taking the opponent's side into consideration, but getting none of the same in return. This can be due to several different circumstances, for instance: the opponent may not… Continue

How many of you get that?My answer is quite simply this: "I do not hate god. I hate your idea of god. I hate your jealous, homophobic, misogynistic, genocidal, pedophile persona of a 'higher power.' I hate the actions that result from a moral code put down by goat herders two thousand years before my birth. I -quite literally- hate the hatred the followers of the Abrahamic god foster upon this world." I hate your god about as much as you hate Freddie Kruger. Even an imaginary… Continue

I started a blog last fall, Agnostic Innocence, which lately I have grown rather disenchanted with. To make a long story short, I started the blog specifically with the intent to better understand my own position on different topics; it was really an exercise in my own introspection that I published on the internet in order to force myself to adhere to the writing standards of the public sphere. At the time I began (and named) the blog, I was technically an atheist in that I did not… Continue

When discussing philosophy and 'theology' why do people use arguments they know are flawed? In no other area of intellectual pursuit does this happen.I don't read about physics and see a physicist explain:The aether exists, all waves propagate through a medium, light is a wave and the aether is it's medium! You can't get interference if the waves aren't in…Continue

One of the biggest questions we atheists usually have about religion, and Christianity specifically is "If your god is a benevolent god, why does he let us commit terrible acts, acts that many Christians would call 'evil'?"

Their answer is usually that "God gave us free will" and that it is our fault for choosing to sin (such as Adam and Eve eating the apple). I think this is a cop out answer, as most things like free will and justice are human constructs, concepts that work in our… Continue

When debating a theist about the existence of God, there are two arguments that many of them tend to rely on as last ditch efforts. These are Pascal’s Wager and the Ontological Argument. However, neither is valid because they both have been refuted.
Pascal’s wager, devised by Blaise Pascal, states that it is better to believe in God and be wrong than to not believe in God and be wrong. If one believes in God… Continue